The Lancaster Writing Programme

The Lancaster Writing Programme is one of the most prestigious centres for new writing in the country. 2013 marked our 30th anniversary making the Lancaster Writing Programme one of the longest standing destinations for writers across the country. Moreover, with 13 permanent members of staff, we are one of the largest.

Our writers are prize-winning specialists across a number of forms, from poetry and the short story to work for radio, novels and creative non-fiction and our creative interests are wide-ranging – with recent work engaging with national and international debates around landscape, literature and place, literature and religion, transcultural writing, creative-critical work, myth, history, genre and literature in the digital age.

Visiting Professors

The Lancaster Writing Programme has, as visiting professors, both Paul Muldoon and Benoit Peeters. The work of our Visiting Professors here takes the form of a mix of undergraduate lectures, MA workshops, tutorials with PhD students and public readings.

Paul Muldoon

Professor Muldoon is a former Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford, currently Howard G. B. Clark '21 Professor at Princeton University and, according to the New Criterion, 'the most influential poet after Seamus Heaney.'

He is also Poetry Editor of The New Yorker, Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Benoit Peeters

Professor Peeters, who studied at the Sorbonne, and under the supervision of Roland Barthes, is a novelist, film-maker, biographer and, along with the artisit Francois Schuiten, has authored the prize-winning series of graphic novels The Obscure Cities.